Beadle's Half Dime Library No. 1084

This issue of Beadle and Adams' weekly (May 13, 1897) contains two serials. "The Gold Witch" by Col. Prentiss Ingraham follows Buck Brandon, a former Government scout seeking work, who encounters a mysterious fifty-year-old woman in the Colorado mountains. She dresses in military attire with a staff bearing a scythe and bayonet, commands animals (bloodhound, crow, parrot, black cat), and claims supernatural ability to detect gold, directing Brandon to Deadman's Den mining camps. "The Lone Mascot of Deadman's Den" begins separately, involving two young men—Dare Sloan and Richard Doyle—parting ways after escaping from jail with aid from Miss Dangerfield, whom Sloan had previously saved. Sloan heads toward Buck Brandon's Nebraska ranch to locate his mother, while Doyle travels westward via Overland coach to San Francisco. The narrative establishes frontier settings across Colorado, Nebraska, and mountain territories.